New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Donna Summer, the multimillion-selling singer and songwriter whose hits captured both the giddy hedonism of the 1970s disco era and the feisty female solidarity of the early 1980s, died on Thursday at her home in Naples, Fla. She was 63.
The cause was cancer, her publicist, Brian Edwards, said.
Biography:
LaDonna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), known by the stage name Donna Summer, was an American singer-songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s. She had a mezzo-soprano vocal range, and was a five-time Grammy Award winner. Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the U.S. Billboard chart, and she also charted four number-one singles in the United States within a 13-month period.
Summer died on May 17, 2012. The Associated Press reports that she died in the morning at her home in Key West, Florida at age 63 following a battle with cancer. The Bradenton Herald quotes “Sarasota County records” stating that she lived in Englewood, Florida at the time of her death. The reference did not state the place of her death.
Summer was born Ladonna Adrian Gaines on December 31, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts to parents Andrew and Mary Gaines and was one of seven children. She and her family were raised in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. Her father, Andrew Gaines, was a butcher, and her mother Mary, was a schoolteacher. Summer’s mother later recalled that from the time she could talk, Summer would often sing: “She literally loved to sing. She used to go through the house singing, singing. She sang for breakfast and for lunch and for supper.”
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